


With Your Eyes Closed

by DontForgetToPanic



Series: 30 Minute Fics [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Closeted Character, Established Relationship, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 10:36:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10717716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontForgetToPanic/pseuds/DontForgetToPanic
Summary: you say you’re not ashamed but your words don’t protect him from those needles in his chest and your words don’t protect him from those needles in your hand





	With Your Eyes Closed

By the time you’re finished with the shower he’s already dressed and sitting cross-legged on the hotel bed. There’s light streaming through the tinted window and you wonder if this is all still a dream because it mustn’t be possible for someone to look so beautiful at the dawn of six in the morning. He smiles and you smile back as you trip over your own feet, as you lose yourself in the unabashed unfiltered unapologetic light of his brown eyes and you wonder, wonder not for the first time how you could have gotten so lucky, how after everything you’ve done.

A towel’s wrapped around your waist and your black hair’s dripping and his eyes make you feel self-conscious even though he’s seen you dressed in much less and in much more intimate settings. but you wonder (always wondering) if he still finds you attractive after eight years together, if he still finds you as attractive as he did when you first waited for him at the transport station, screamed his name when he stepped off the train. He smiled at that station and he’s still smiling now and you can’t stop staring at him and you’d be happy to just stand here and stare for the rest of your life if it meant he would never leave you. His tongue runs along his bottom lip and you get lost again but then he’s laughing and reminding you how it would be helpful to get dressed.

You’re sitting on the bed in only trousers, sitting while tying your shoes, but then you feel his hands his arms his all wrap around your waist. You stop moving and close your eyes, feel those hands brush against your stomach special in a way only he has ever felt and his fingers climb gently upward fingers not baring to leave any skin on your chest untouched.  His body presses tighter against your back, he’s sitting on the heels of his feet knees bracketing your hips and the warmth, his warmth floods through you warm enough to lull you back to sleep. Lips, his lips graze your ear and you know if he keeps this up you’ll have a problem you don’t have enough time to sort out and still he kisses the nape of your neck his hands run down your back down until they reach your waist again, but this time you’re ready so you catch those hands his hands and pull them to your lips.

His palms are slightly larger than yours and everything just seems, feels, just _is_ so different than what it was back in the frosted winds of Manchester when you met, back when he was all limbs he’d yet to fully grow in to, back when everything seemed so new and so forbidden and so perfect and nothing could go wrong as long as you were together holding each other up.  You fold his hands together and wrap them in one of yours. Your other arm stretches behind you wraps around his waist and you’re pulling him in close so he’s straddling you, sat in your lap breathy laugh filling your ears drifting down your spine and you know then that you’ll never let him go without a fight, even if it starts to destroy you destroy him inside.

 

It’s another crowd another spotlight another stage another mile long queue all queued to meet _you_ and you can’t believe is real; it’s real and it’s a dream but with the dream and the reality comes the dense noise of concentrated energy armed with laminated VIP passes and cellphone cameras and yes you love it, you love your fans love their unique energy and stories and experiences and dreams, but it’s hours of queue and those hours at Meet and Greets equal hours when you’re not Phil, you’re AmazingPhil, so you can’t help but feel spent overwhelmed all you want to do is curl into yourself because sometimes you forget who “yourself” even is. You sometimes feel bad feel grateful feel small when danisnotonfire (not Dan, not here) carries the conversations and you can’t help but drift off at times, can’t help but listen to his sounds his voice his breaths.

It’s a dream with reality containing unwanted encounters, accidental sightings, paid selfie moments, all of it and you almost always meet wonderful people who make everything you do worthwhile, but sometimes you meet people who aren’t so wonderful, people who keep their camera on record when you ask them not to, people with questions too invasive, people with questions questioning you questioning who wakes up in your arms questioning if you’re hiding your sexuality hiding when you haven’t even revealed a sexuality to begin with. The questions today are questions that make Dan look uncomfortable even though danisnotonfire plays it off as a joke, and again you remember Manchester but this time you also remember London remember the colorless London where he would hunch into himself in public and make sure to keep a safe half-meter distance between you and you wonder if fame is worth that empty echoing feeling felt from hiding.

danisnotonfire handles himself handles questions well, it’s Dan who can’t quite handle it so instead he gets one more needle stabbed in his chest, and you can feel that needle but that’s only because you’re the one who stabbed him, because you’re the one who asks him for that half-meter between you and him half-meter while in places others might see and you tell yourself tell him you’re not ashamed you say you’re not ashamed but your words don’t protect him from those needles in his chest and your words don’t protect him from those needles in your hand, but those needles stay because danisnotonfire handles those questions too well and yes he handles them so you don’t have to but it still hurts when it’s handled because it makes you feel like you and he are not a we.

 

You have the worst argument you’ve ever had that night, argument about nothing but nothing doesn’t stop you from yelling out insults you don’t mean and words that make you flinch as soon as they leave your mouth and you want to take them back when they fall from your mouth but at the same time you want to keep throwing them and want to keep stabbing and stabbing and stabbing those needles until he’s breaking until he’s broken because you’re breaking you’re broken he broke you. He doesn’t say anything tonight, which scares you because usually he’s yelling back, tearing out those needles to stab you back, but now it hurts more than needles when he won’t look you in the eye, hurts when he digs his fingernails into his hand so he won’t start to cry.  You hate him in this moment, hate yourself for hiding, hate him for hiding for letting you hide for not wanting to hide. You hate him for hating himself hate you for hating yourself, for refusing to be proud of you and him and most of all you hate how you love him. 

You tell yell at him to leave and you bang your head against the door once it’s closed you slide down once it’s close you bury your head in your hands, in the hands that now seem too empty without anyone to hold them.

 

You don’t sleep can’t sleep and you remember why you hate hotels when you’re blanketed by the night by the cold the loneliness creeping into your chest. Your heart stutters and you wonder if it’ll stop altogether. It’s night and the darkness fills you up and you’re tired but you wish you’ll never sleep again and you’re empty and empty and your breath is constricting and your lungs are giving out and your hands are shaking and trembling and your forehead is wet and the sweat is dripping off your hair why are the blankets wrapped around you when you’re choking and choking and wishing (not for the first time) that life was easier.

 

Last day for the week you have to preform, preforming on stage, in panels, for queues of cameras on flash. Last day for the week and everyone knows everything’s not okay because they see you and your vacant eyes, but even so they all just shrug just think you’re an angel because AmazingPhil is an angel so you try and be AmazingPhil, because then you can hide those needles in your pocket. But you’re still Phil when watch him watch as he smiles and laughs and is everything he needs to be but he doesn’t touch you once not even when you can’t stop staring at him stare even while your own needles split you in two.

 

He comes to the hotel room late that night when you don’t hear him open the door. You feel him crawl beside you wrap his arms wrap his self around you while you’re sitting up on this bed you hate but loved the morning before last.

He’s not talking and he’s not crying and you’re trying not to look at the fingernail marks on his palms, and while you don’t want one he still whispers an apology into your neck. you won’t you don’t apologize but you can you do fall into his arms pull him into your arms because you’re weak and you know that you’ll never let him go even if you keep hiding for years, even if you keep watching him be stabbed with needles even if you keep stabbing those needles.

He keeps his eyes closed you keep yours open and he keeps his arms wrapped tight around your neck as you move above him press down above him look down above him. You use darkness as a blanket while his legs are around your waist and all you hear is him and all you feel is him and all you see is him and you wish (and wish and wish) life could be easier and you wonder if life would’ve been better if you’d never met, if he never had the chance to burrow beneath your skin and take over everything until you didn’t know anything nothing but him. 

You wake up in the morning with your legs tangled together and his back flush to your chest. Your hands covers his as you breathe in the overwhelming scent that screams him and you bury your face in the soft waves of his hair while you can’t stop wishing he wasn’t so perfect and you can’t stop wondering if it could get easier and most of all you can’t stop wishing hoping wanting more.                   

**Author's Note:**

> Is it cheating if I write a fic inspired by one of my own fics I wrote a few years ago? 
> 
> Thank you for reading! And thank you to everyone who ever comments on my stuff, it really means a lot.
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr if you'd like! dontforgettopanic.tumblr.com


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